The immune system plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of a wide variety of cancers. When cancers progress, it is widely believed that the immune system either fails to respond sufficiently or fails to respond appropriately, allowing cancer cells to grow. Currently, standard medical treatments for cancer including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy and cellular therapy have clear limitations with regard to both efficacy and toxicity. To date, these approaches have met with varying degrees of success dependent upon the type of cancer, general health of the patient, stage of disease at the time of diagnosis, etc. Improved strategies that combine specific manipulation of the immune response to cancer in combination with standard medical treatments may provide a means for enhanced efficacy and decreased toxicity.
One therapeutic approach to cancer treatment involves the use of genetically modified tumor cells which express cytokines locally at the vaccine site. Activity has been demonstrated in tumor models using a variety of immunomodulatory cytokines, including IL-4, IL-2, TNF-alpha, G-CSF, IL-7, IL-6 and GM-CSF, as described in Golumbeck P T et al., Science 254:13-716, 1991; Gansbacher B et al., J. Exp. Med. 172:1217-1224, 1990; Fearon E R et al., Cell 60:397-403, 1990; Gansbacher B et al., Cancer Res. 50:7820-25, 1990; Teng M et al., PNAS 88:3535-3539, 1991; Columbo M P et al., J. Exp. Med. 174:1291-1298, 1991; Aoki et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 89(9):3850-4, 1992; Porgador A, et al., Nat. Immun. 13(2-3):113-30, 1994; Dranoff G et al., PNAS 90:3539-3543, 1993; Lee C T et al., Human Gene Therapy 8:187-193, 1997; Nagai E et al., Cancer Immunol. Immunother. 47:2-80, 1998 and Chang A et al., Human Gene Therapy 11:839-850, 2000, respectively. The use of autologous cancer cells as vaccines to augment anti-tumor immunity has been explored for some time. See, e.g., Oettgen et al., “The History of Cancer Immunotherapy”, In: Biologic Therapy of Cancer, Devita et al. (eds.) J. Lippincot Co., pp 87-199, 1991; Armstrong T D and Jaffee E M, Surg Oncol Clin N Am. 11(3):681-96, 2002; and Bodey B et al., Anticancer Res 20(4):2665-76, 2000).
Several phase I/II human trials using GM-CSF-secreting autologous or allogeneic tumor cell vaccines have been performed (Simons et al. Cancer Res 1999 59:5160-8; Soiffer et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1998 95:13141-6; Simons et al. Cancer Res 1997 57:1537-46; Jaffee et al. J Clin Oncol 2001 19:145-56; Salgia et al. Clin Oncol 2003 21:624-30; Soiffer et al. J Clin Oncol 2003 21:3343-50; Nemunaitis et al. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2004 Feb. 18 96(4):326-31; Borello and Pardoll, Growth Factor Rev. 13(2):185-93, 2002; and Thomas et al., J. Exp. Med. 200(3)297-306, 2004).
Administration of genetically modified GM-CSF-expressing cancer cells to a patient results in an immune response and preliminary clinical efficacy against prostate and other cancers has been demonstrated in Phase I/II clinical trails. However, there remains a need for improved methods and compositions for predicting whether such therapies are likely to be effective, for monitoring the effectiveness of such therapies, and for increasing the effectiveness of such therapies. These and other needs are provided by the present invention.